Ahimsa – Supriya Kelkar
They wouldn’t hang a ten-year-old girl, thought Anjali, clenching a small tin of black paint. She took care not to get any on the skirt of her saffron ghagra-choli woven with real gold thread. It was Anjali’s Diwali present from last year, made from the most expensive fabric in the shop. She had picked it out herself. And she had managed to keep it as bright and crisp as the day she had gotten it, despite heavy monsoon rains that had drenched her little town in the middle of India. “Hurry up,” whispered her friend, Irfaan, as he glanced nervously around them. Perspiration beaded around his collar near the black thread of his taweez, the necklace whose locket contained Koran verses. Clad in a cool white pajama-kurta, he was more appropriately dressed for the muggy August weather than Anjali, but he couldn’t stop sweating. “We can’t get caught.”